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Monthly Archives: June 2018

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movement obscures the form
the light on the water dazzles us
we can’t quite see

we peer and probe
seeking always seeking
as if there is some power
in depth

as if that surface glitter
is not enough

maybe movement is all there is –

the fine oscillation
of atoms, more space
than substance –

energy transmitted and transforming,
the slow drift
into entropy

flames dancing on the surface
of the universe

“It is life’s work to recognize the mystery of the obvious” Jim Harrison ~ Songs of Unreason

It finally arrived – the last day of Jilly’s 28 Days of Unreason project. It’s going to be strange without the daily wrestle with Jim Harrison’s gnomic sentences. Thank you, Jilly, for bringing this to us.

It’s too hot to poet much tonight. We hit 31 degrees today – unheard of in this green and pleasant land! – so this is my offering for dVerse’s open link night as well.

This, then, is her solstice pilgrimage,
this six monthly walk, down this too long corridor,
ticking off letters, – M is for Women’s Health,
P is for Medical Photography
Q is for X-ray and Imaging.

She’s here in the long days of summer,
when the windows are open in this small room,
letting in voices and slow moving air,

and again in the short dark winter days
when there’s not enough light to spare,
not enough warmth to go around –

stripped of power, clothing, efficacy –
she has a name-tag in her bag, out there
she’s someone, here she repeats her name,
address, date of birth at each desk –

Open Sesame

– and she’s touched gently, probed by soft, kind hands,
that press and smooth her skin,
searching for the death that bubbles under it.

And there you go – Day 26 of Jilly’s 28 days of unreason challenge. I’m going to make a confession now: I haven’t read any Jim Harrison apart from the quotations put up here. I will, but I wanted to do this challenge without any preconceptions about his work, and just take each quotation on its own terms. It’s been a great series of prompts. I can’t believe we only have two to go.

And here’s the quotation:

“There is a human wildness held beneath the skin that finds all barriers brutishly unbearable” from Songs of Unreason

I’m also linking it up to tonight’s dVerse prompt – opposites attract, posted by Lillian. She asks us to write a poem including some opposites as contrasts. I’ve used the two solstices here.

There are so many seasons, overlaid like layers of paper – like one of those books with separate flaps you had when you were a child, so that you could create a clown with a ballerina’s body and farmer’s boots, or a spaceman with a gingerbread tummy and toddler mary-janes.

There’s the calendar year, of course, but I don’t pay much attention to that. The academic year still runs my life – new shoes and pencils in September, a surge of freedom in July. This year we’ve had Big Exams in our house, so Exam Season has been stressier than usual. Hay Fever Season is another biggie – I watch the pollen report, even though there’s not much I can do about it. The farming year dictates the smells, the mud, the dust, and the likelihood of getting stuck behind a tractor, and Grockle Season started early this year – an outbreak of windbreaks and pop-up tents on our local beach as the visitors invade; caravans and campers on our deep, narrow lanes. Our local ice-cream vans come out in March and disappear in October. The first cone is the start of something – I’m not sure what.

We skin-swim all year, and suddenly it’s a pleasure, not a penance. We look a little slant-wise at the people swimming in wetsuits. They are missing out on the fiercest sensation of all.

seasons shift and flow
suns rise and set, tourists swim
the sea is always there

They bring the weather with them –
wild winds that flutter home-made pennants,
set lanterns rocking, shadows leaping
up canvas walls and wooden pallisades –

they sing out loud, gathering in loose groups
and drinking sun-gold cider, moonlight vodka –
tell stories round the dancing flames
of midnight fires: their stories –
tales that shift and change
with every telling, forging their own myths.

They’re gathering here before the solstice,
a ragged caravan of feathers, flapping, black;
of russet coats and cool green gazing;
of blues and yellows, splashing monochrome,
dark masks, striped faces, brown eyes
blinking in the light. A mustering of

So many things – lost things, that
unexpectedly break free, appear –
things jettisoned in the fight
to stay afloat. Illusions formed
from kelp and moonlight.

In this small boat,
I’ve sat out storms, and calms.
Some days I’ve waited hours
in the harsh, baking sun,
and nothing’s bitten on my line at all;
sometimes I’ve pulled a hundred
shimmering mackerel;
sometimes a single silver fish,
that I’ve let free, to leap and grow.

That’s why I ran to the woods.”

He was a man who gathered factswhat does moonlight taste like?
as if he could build a world from them,who first fell in love? with whom?snatched dates and data from the atmosphere,
what do flowers dream of?
cross-referenced, indexed, filed.what colour are my eyes?He questioned endlessly, collated
can you hear a sunbeam strike the ocean?
all the answers, in boxes first,where did I leave my keys?then just in piles, great tottering heaps
what noise do Saturn’s rings make?
that rose around him,what’s the gestation period of the unicorn?and still, the world eluded him.

She’s not going to write about love –
because everyone writes about love,
and everyone knows
that love is a rose
and love is a thorn,
and love is a glistening
bead of blood on a fingertip.

There’s so much more to life
than love – there’s moonlight,
and reading, and bottomless coffees,
but everyone knows that
love is a warm jolt of caffeine,
and love is a poem,
and love is the moon,
and love is a lone wolf howling,

and even when she strips
the metaphors out of her work,
writing a forest – a real one –
she drove there, and pressed her hand
into the bark of a tree
’til her palm was marked,
still everyone knows
that love is a tree,
and love is a forest,
and love is the road
that carries you there.